Another map for Melee

I haven't been a total slacker recently when it comes to working on game stuff; while I was off for the Christmas holidays, I cranked out this arena for Melee battles. Just like with my previous game mat, this came from a styrofoam sheet in some furniture packaging and was fairly simple to complete. This time, however, I decided to put just a single map on the board.

First, I pressed Heroscape tiles into the surface to imprint the hexes onto the styrofoam. After that, I painted the whole thing with white school craft glue for protection--and to save time, I mixed the base color of brown in with the glue (this also made it easy to see where I missed a spot). Once I had the base coat done, I painted the individual hexes, using different colors for each megahex and for the starting areas. Finally, I brushed a dark wash into all the hex borders for better visibility.  

Not counting drying time, this project probably took about an hour or so for me to finish. I like the earth tones here; it's a lot brighter than my first attempt, which is more dungeonesque compared to this outdoor desert arena look. And it looks pretty good with some of my newly painted minis to show it off. 

I have one more sheet of styrofoam I plan use for a Wizard map, with its additional megahexes. I'm thinking of a wholly different palatte--maybe with cooler colors for a more magical look, but we'll see.